Brindabella

We went into town in Paimpol on Saturday morning for supplies and could not resist the oysters and sole in the poissonnerie, so dinner for Saturday night was sorted. The oysters were from Anse de Paimpol and were particularly good. We took Bella for an evening walk and saw Demijon II who invited us on for a drink.

Sunday we took Bella for a long walk around the coast. In the evening we joined Demijon II and Shades of Blue for a meal at the Restaurant Du Port which was a very pleasant evening.

On Monday we visited the Musee de la mer (Sea Museum) which was mainly about the port during the cod fishing days where boats went from Paimpol to Iceland.

Tuesday was time to move on and make some progress back home. We left the lock at 8:30 on free flow, set for the long trip to Iles de Chausey over 50nm away. Initially motoring and then sailing the conditions were ok, but the waves were from the back quarter which is always unpleasant. We arrived at Iles Chausey and anchored in the only deep water bay off Port Marie.

By 9pm, the waves were really too large to anchor, but with St Malo over 3 hours away and Granville over 2 hours we decided to stay put. We also knew the wind was decreasing overnight. It was quite an unpleasant night with waves hitting the back of the boat and a lot of movement inside the boat. Nevertheless, we turned in for the night.

We were woken at 1am with a low water anchor alarm. We were up and dressed immediately and ready to move the boat as we had anchored close to rocks on both sides of the bay. While Simon was studying the chart plotter working out if we had moved, the anchor position watch also went off saying that we had slipped anchor. Now we were starting to panic! It was pitch black, quite rough and we were being told the anchor had slipped.

After studying the chart plotter further, we had not moved at all. We came to the conclusion that the echo sounder was picking up the anchor chain and not the true depth, as it was flicking between 3m and 12m. Also, on studying the anchor position, we had only just moved out of the area as the tide had changed. In fact, although it was a bit rough to anchor, everything was fine. Back to bed...

Time: 9:00 hours Miles: 50nm Total Time: 90.5 hours Total Miles: 534nm